Just ran into the lock, ouch. Good thing for the alt location.

>In response to your x86 post:

>>4237
Open hardware usually means you can load your own firmware onto it and you don't have to sign a NDA to see the full documentation, like most specialized chips these days. ARM vs x86, one is RISC and the other CISC, with the latter having all sorts of "peculiarities". There's a security researcher who brute-force mapped the instruction set for a specific Intel x86 and found undocumented instructions. There's a whitepaper and recorded discussion of it online if you search for it. He described it as "godmode" to give you an idea. He also somewhat recently found a hidden subsystem (suspected to be used for chip verification at the factory) that can still be accessed in shipped chips. The subsystem allows for accessing/bypassing all sorts of things.

x86 is a bit different than ARM, in the sense that you only have two major companies that make the chips, AMD and Intel. Where as with ARM, the IP is licensed to other companies so they can make their own chips. This does not guarantee that they're safe, but it does add choices when sourcing.